Standardize your monitoring level, part III: switch it up

We’ve been talking for the past couple of days about how to standardize your monitoring level, in order to achieve more consistent results.

And through this thread, I’ve been leaning on the idea that you should have a nominal monitoring level — a standardized, comfortably medium-loud volume that you work at consistently.

But I don’t want to imply that you should only ever work at that one listening loudness! Indeed, it’s important not to do that. If you listen to anything in the same way for long enough, it will start to be like wallpaper — you won’t notice details any more. And noticing details is of course critical in our line of work.

So, here is the advanced-level version of standardizing your listening loudness:

Once you’ve found your nominal listening level, you should also find two other listening levels: your loud listening level and your quiet listening level. And I would suggest that you should, as with the nominal level, take some time and figure out what those levels are for you, and mark them, so that you can return to them consistently!

In my example, I have a UAD system, so I can see in the Console app exactly where my volume knob is set. And here’s what I’ve arrived at for my three listening levels:

• quiet listening: -22

• nominal: -20

• loud listening: -18

As you can see, they’re all only 2dB apart! It’s not a huge difference. One click on the knob in either direction. But that 4dB difference between the quiet one and the loud one is still fairly substantial. It’s a good range of experiences.

Keeping it fresh — jamie